Zee Media Bureau


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New Delhi: Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman released a report on Ease of Doing Business ranking of states on Monday, where Andhra Pradesh and Telengana jointly topped the chart with 98.78 percent each.  The states were ranked on the basis of 340-point business reform action plan and its implementation by the States.


Gujarat slipped to second position with 98.21 percent from the first rank last year in Ease of Doing Business ranking. Chhattisgarh with 97.32 percent stood at the third spot, followed by  and Madhya Pradesh with 97.01 percent. The states were assessed for the period from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016.


Haryana ranked fifth with 96.95 percent followed by Jharkhand with 96.57 percent; Rajasthan with 96.43 percent; Uttarakhand with 96.13 percent and Maharashtra completed the top 10 with 92.86 percent.


In total 32 States and Union Territories filed evidence of implementation of 7,124 reforms, which were reviewed by the World Bank team and validated by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion's (DIPP’s) team.


The national implementation average of Ease of Doing Business also rose to 48.93 per cent, significantly higher than last year's national average of 32 per cent, said the DIPP statement indicating that States made significcant progress in Ease of Doing Business this year.


The poorly performing states which were listed in “jump start needed” category with poor implementation percentage of 0-40 percent included Kerala, Goa, Tripura, Daman and Diu, Assam, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Puducherry, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Chandigarh, Meghalaya , Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Lakshadweep.


The government is also planning to launch a new index on “agricultural marketing & farm-friendly reforms” this year. “We are looking at broad-basing the reform drive,” the Commerce and Industry Minister said.


The top 10 States with enviable score on the agricultural marketing & farmer-friendly reforms index are: Maharashtra with 81.7 percent, followed by Gujarat with 71.5 percent; Rajasthan with 70 percent; MP with 69.5 percent; Haryana with 63.3 percent; Himachal Pradesh with 59.5 percent; A.P. with 56.2 percent; Karnataka with 55.5 percent; Telengana with 54.3 percent and Goa with 52.8 percent.


While only seven states had implemented over 50 percent of the total reform points in 2015 in Ease of Doing Business ranking, 17 States crossed the 50 percent implementation mark this year with 16 crossing the implementation level of over 75 percent.